And perhaps one has to wonder whether the Trachtenberg commission was ever intended to be more than window dressing. As the Mossawa Center observed:

The committee’s assertion that it is unable to reevaluate the allocation of the State Budget sets the tone of the entire report. The report does not propose to make any changes to socio-economic policy because the committee does not have the mandate to do so. However, the most unfortunate and disappointing aspect is that the committee employed the discourse of the protest movement to frame the report, but refrained from applying the demands of the discourse to the content of the report and the recommendations. Therefore, on face value, the report seems promising. However upon further investigation, it becomes abundantly clear that the report is lacking substantial means to achieve progress.

The committee wasn’t even allowed to consider an appropriate range of changes. Further when a committee has no authority of its own, then it must rely on its convener, i.e. the Prime Minister to use his political clout to carry out its proposals. Not only did the scope of the report fall well short of its stated mission, Netanyahu has done nothing to mobilize likud to carry out even its scaled down proposals.

In all of these cases the lesson is clear: the Netanyahu government is only too happy to tell us what we want to hear even when it has no intention of doing anything other than business as usual.